One of the fun things that I've been doing this year which keeps me more busy than I can comprehend, is running a DnD-like game again. I ran a lot of games in high school and college and a few times after that but have been in a many-year drought. I say "DnD-like" because I'm not running 5e or Pathfinder or anything like that because I've written my own system, one I like a lot, and a natural evolution of the one we built and played in college.
Some folks at work wanted to play having been inspired by stuff like Critical Role and asked if I would run. We just finished session #9 after a long hiatus and there was a fantastic example of players shaping the world a la Matt Colville, something that really doesn't happen in any other kind of game.
Last century when I was in college I ran an adventure for a couple pals of mine in the dorm. I didn't really have anything planned so we rolled up characters and I invented a little podunk town on the coast but otherwise in the middle of nowhere named Celbengoa. Humble beginnings at the start, the two of them rolled into town and one of the characters, a swarthy fellow named Akbar hatched a scheme. With no actual money and no real goods to sell, they chiseled out a few dozen triangles of sandstone from the nearby area and swindled the townsfolk into thinking they were lucky teeth from the maw of a terrible fictional creature called a Sand Serpent. They ended up selling many dozens to the uneducated denizens of the town and abandoned the town with their riches.
Those characters would end up leaving many more marks on the world but that's not the story we're telling tonight. Unfortunately, before we get back to the story, we have to talk about one mechanic and some metaphysics. Sorry. I'll keep it short.
The metaphysics of the world I run in has the Earthdawn idea that the nature of things come from their "patterns" which can be affected by significant events, strong beliefs, and other normal phenomena. Casting a fireball is basically tapping into the pattern of the fireball spell and channeling its power. Akbar's swindle ended up being the most significant thing that happened in the town for a while. He'd sold enough Sand Serpent Teeth that just about everyone in town had one and had convinced enough folks that they were lucky that they actually started to convey a luck bonus to any who believed. Akbar's companion would never get the bonus even though he wore one around his neck because he knew the truth. Folks from that town would get a bonus because for them it actually was lucky and as a significant event had left a change in the pattern of the town and its inhabitants.
The game mechanic is that all player characters have an attribute called luck. It's a pool of dice they may use on just about any roll to improve their chances of success. They cost experience to replenish so there's a fun tradeoff between being super badass on a bunch of rolls but then not being able to raise stats as a result. Characters who grew up in Celbengoa would naturally have a Sand Serpent Tooth and for those characters it would convey +1 to the roll when one or more luck dice were expended. Several characters over the years have been from that town and have all received the bonus. It's a tiny bonus and one that is forgotten most of the time but we're now prepared to tell the rest of the story.
One of the characters in my current game, a sneaky sort named Jamal, is from Celbengoa. In fact, much like Akbar before him, his adventure had its humble beginnings there. They had just defeated a boss and the boss's minions were fleeing like chumps. A battered and bloody Jamal is surrounded by kobolds who are now intent on fleeing. Instead of resting, Jamal lucks his attack roll and knocks it out of the park to the point that he gets a serious bonus to damage. His AoE hits all 7 but is a low damage ability so he lucks his damage roll and while his damage is good, it manages to bring them all to one hit point. It looked like those 7 kobolds would get away with their lives...but NO! Jamal has a Sand Serpent Tooth, adds his +1 and kills all 7 with his AoE. That bonus yielded the party about 1/4 of a typical adventure's experience.
This is already a fun story and happened at a climactic point in the battle but what really makes it fun is that it was a player's actions two decades earlier that put it over the top. I don't know how often that happens in tabletop RPGs but I can't think of anywhere else it could happen. That's pretty goddamn cool, and I had to share.
